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Sound and Video Archives

The FSU Ethnomusicology Sound and Video Archive

The FSU Ethnomusicology Sound and Video Archive contains several hundred original field recordings from all over the world. The majority of the recordings in this collection are from Central and South America, the Caribbean, Japan, and Vietnam, reflecting the research areas of the archive's founder, Dr. Dale Olsen. Numerous original recordings are included that were made by student and faculty at The Florida State University who have conducted research in Florida and elsewhere in the United States. The archive also includes original concert tapes, recorded on the FSU campus by visiting artists from India, China, Japan, Africa, South America, and by the Word Music Ensembles from the FSU College of Music. Plans are currently underway to catalog and digitize all of the recordings, in order to provide easy access to the materials.

The Music Iconography Archive

Music iconography is the description and study of music through images or representations. In many instances the representation of music through paintings and other types of images (artifacts, sculptures, photographs, mosaics, lithographs, petroglyphs, etc.) provides the only documentation of historic and prehistoric musical events and material culture (musical instruments).

The World Music Iconography Archive contains thousands of color slides of paintings and other types of images of musical events, dance, and musical instruments from around the world. Music iconography is of most value when it has neither historic, cultural, nor geographic constraints; hence the term "World Music Iconography." The slides are stored and cataloged by country of origin (modern political divisions), and are indexed on computer.

The purposes of the World Music Iconography Archive are:

to enhance the study and dissemination of the cultural contexts of world music from the past and present;

to further the study of the performance techniques of world musical instruments, dance, and ensembles;

to augment the study of organology, or the science of musical instruments;

to enrich the study of symbolism in world music;

to provide the student, local, national, and international community (teachers and scholars) with access to primary and secondary photographic source materials (first and second generation color slides) in world music iconography, with thorough documentation.